​By John Harrington

Kevin O’Halloran will surely achieve a first when he plays in a Munster Senior Football Final on Sunday before he has ever even played a game of senior club football.

His sudden rise to prominence in the last couple of years is the sort of remarkable rags to riches sporting story a Hollywood screen-writer would dream up. There’s little tradition of Gaelic Football in O’Halloran’s North Tipperary village of Portroe, and it is purely to facilitate him that they have decided to set up a Junior team this year. Previously, they had only played football up until the U-21 grade in recent years.

That Junior team has to play a match though, so the only senior grade that O’Halloran has ever played Gaelic Football in has been at the highest level of all with Tipperary.

“It’s not your usual under-age footballer coming up along story,” he admits. “I had an U-21 club game last year with my club Portroe in north Tipperary which wouldn’t be known for its footballing skills. But we played Shannon Rovers the same day and things kind of went my way. I got a good few scores and kicked a few frees.

“The fella that got me into the (Tipperary) U-21s, his son was actually manager of the U-21 team for Shannon Rovers. He asked why I wasn't in with the County U-21 footballers, and then I got a phone-call the following Tuesday evening from Joe Hannigan, he's involved with Friends of Tipperary Football.

“He rang me on a Tuesday evening at 6.40 wanting to know if I could go down for training at 7.30 below in Thurles. Thurles would be 40 minutes away from me and I said, ‘Joe, I’ll never make training tonight, I’ll be late. I don’t want to be late my first night at training’. He said, ‘Put me onto your father, so’. I put him onto my father and he said, ‘Joe will pick you up in Nenagh in 10 minutes’. So Joe picked me up and he had me in training below in Thurles at 7.45. The rest took off from there since.”

Joining up with the Tipp U-21 and senior panels last year was O’Halloran’s first ever involvement at inter-county level but he made an immediate impression. Not only was he drafted into the U-21 team to make his debut in the Munster Final, he was also given the free-taking duties.

He justified that faith by scoring six points, including five frees. He then chipped in with four points against Dublin in the All-Ireland Semi-Final and six in the All-Ireland Final defeat at the hands of Tyrone. He then went on from there to make his senior inter-county championship debut as a substitute against Kerry in the Munster Semi-Final.

“I just went out and got stuck in and mixed in with the lads I suppose. And kind of get them to know you and you to know them. Then, look, who does be taking the frees, and you have to be putting the confidence in yourself to put your hand up and say, well, yeah, I take frees.

“I suppose it's the belief from the guys around you that encourages you to go out and play. They have the belief in you that you can go out and play to the best of your ability. I suppose it's the trust that we have in each other down there.”

O’Halloran has played a pivotal role in Tipperary’s march to Sunday’s Munster Final. He kicked two points in the quarter-final against Waterford, and then really wrote his name in lights in the semi-final against Cork.

It looked like Tipp were about to throw away victory when they surrendered a nine-point lead, but O’Halloran saved the day when he landed a late ’45 and free. Considering how much was at stake and how relatively inexperienced he still is, he showed tremendous bottle and technique to hold his nerve despite all the pressure.

“It’s like going into a Leaving Cert exam – you have a task in front of you,” says O’Halloran. “You have to concentrate on yourself and not everyone around you. I just said ‘listen, I have a task here and I have to block out everything that’s going on here at the minute and just get the ball over the bar’.

“It’s just technique that I’ve worked on. I’ve read a few books, I’ve listened to a few rugby lads. It’s all about technique and finding the right technique for you. Last year, I found a technique that suited me and it’s worked for me since.

“I played a lot of soccer in goals so it was a short run-up and getting the ball down the field. I adjusted that a small bit to get more accuracy more so than distance and I found the right technique.”

O’Halloran is self-taught in more ways than one. He has read the autobiographies of world-class kickers from other sports to see if he could pick up a tip or two along the way.

“Yeah, I’ve read Jonny Wilkinson’s, I’ve read Ronan O’Gara’s. I’ve listened to Jonny Sexton a few times on the radio and looked at him in the paper about a few pressure kicks that he’s had. You learn from them, lads from experience, the way they block out the pressure on such important kicks. That goes into the memory bank and you bring them out on the days you need them.

“I was just concentrating on getting the ball over the bar. To me, I blocked out the score-line, the time, everything. Just get the ball over the bar. To be honest, I don’t remember how much time there was left on the clock. All I know it was a '45 and I just put it over the bar.”

O’Halloran is also a very talented hurler and won a North Tipperary Senior medal with Portroe in 2012 as an 18-year-old wing-forward. His sudden rise to prominence as a Gaelic Footballer has even taken his neighbours by surprise, and generated a new interest in Gaelic Football in the parish.

“I'd even say even until last year in the club nearly every football in it would have been punctured! No, the support is great from the club at home.

“There's a huge support rowing in there and I think the support is getting bigger every year with the football. Tipp football is going places. It's moving up the ladder to going places. It mightn't be this year, it mightn't be next year, but hopefully down the line...Tipp is making slow progress, so it is.”

O’Halloran says he first “got the joy of watching football and the love for playing it” from watching Kerry teams on TV. Now, on Sunday, he will get to pit himself against the men he previously admired from a distance. It would be the ultimate Hollywood ending to his remarkable story were he to kick  Tipperary to victory, but he knows the odds are against him.

“I suppose, look, Kerry are the king-pins of Munster. They're going for four in a row. I'd say they're one of the best teams in the country. I suppose it's going to be a tough task to go down to Killarney and try to take the win. We'll go down and just play to the best of our ability and see what happens.”

Why not. After all, that approach has worked just fine for O’Halloran so far.

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**Electric Ireland, proud sponsor of the GAA Minor Championships, has teamed up with former Minor Tipperary footballer Kevin O’Halloran as well as his Minor counterpart Colin English to reflect on the major moments from when they were 17 and played Minor for their county. Throughout the Championship fans can follow the conversation, support the Minors and be a part of something major through the hashtag #GAAThisIsMajor. **